7 ms·

Wild guess is that we've brought back more stringent COVID restrictions than most states, which naturally would delay job market recovery.

tunesmith 5y ago
And if they didn't have their level of COVID restrictions, COVID would be more prevalent, which would also impact the job market.
- spookthesunset 5y ago
  You assume those restrictions work. This has not been proven at all. The reality is all these restrictions could very well be taking a bad situation and making it 100x worse. I highly encourage comparing public data between regions and across policy changes. There is very little correlation between restrictions and impact to key metrics. See for yourself: https://www.covidchartsquiz.com/ https://www.covidchartsquiz.com/
  - mywittyname 5y ago
    I aced that test by reading only the last sentence in the question and answering using this simple rule: If the question asking which state was most restrictive, select the worst looking charge, otherwise select the best looking one. Kind of indicates that the graphs are cherry-picked.
    - spookthesunset 5y ago
      Okay, do this with other charts. They all look the same. Nobody's ever done this before. Nobody knows if it works. And it really isn't the critics job to prove that restrictions don't work. It's upon all these people enacting to them to prove they actually work, and do so in a level that justifies their immense social cost. To date, people who point this out are harassed, bullied, mocked and gaslit. Society is participating in a huge uncontrolled experiment... and nobody even consented to it. Neat, ain't it?
  - specialist 5y ago
    What measure of proof do you require? Infections? Mortality? Hospitalizations? Economic? To save others the bother, the quiz is OC from someone named Tom Wood, an apparent liberatarian, contrarian, freq guest on Fox News, and COVID concern troll of some sort.
    - spookthesunset 5y ago
      > To save others the bother, the quiz is OC from someone named Tom Wood, an apparent liberatarian, contrarian, freq guest on Fox News, and COVID concern troll of some sort. That is pretty weak sauce. Does it really matter who published it? It's freaking charts based on public data! It's not like they made any of it up! You can go right to the state websites and the CDC and create the same set of charts on your own!! Why do so many people get so upset when people present publicly available data that goes against the narrative? Seriously. Do you have any idea how many times I've been called "dangerous" just for simply posting a screenshot of a state covid dashboard? Seriously, what gives?
      - specialist 5y ago
        Ok, fine, I looked at Wood's charts. Current thru 2021/04. Before delta variant. Per the principle of charity, I'll say this rhetoric contains errors of omission. Please update this thesis with current data, inclusive of all jurisdictions. Then update again once positivity dips below 1%, which is hopefully sooner than later. If that doesn't demonstrate to you the benefit of masks, vax, mandates, testing, and whatever else you object to, I ask again: What measure of proof do you require?
        spookthesunset 5y ago
        It's not my job to prove anything. I am not the one making the claim masks work or lockdowns work. People who want to force society to comply with all this are the ones who need to offer substantial and overwhelming evidence that any of this works to a degree that justifies the immense social costs. That means way more than a few of cherry picked papers that say "masks work" (while ignoring ones that don't like the danish mask study). I don't have to prove anything. It bothers me immensely that people think its the skeptics job to somehow prove that what we are doing doesn't work. That isn't how science works. Extraordinary claims (eg: lockdowns work to a degree that justifies their costs) require extraordinary evidence.
  - tunesmith 5y ago
    As for restrictions, I can point out two things we know. Let's start with masks. First, we know that masks help to reduce spread. There have been large-scale studies that show conclusive results along these lines. Like https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2021/09/surgical-masks-covid-19.html https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2021/09/surgical-mask... . Second, we know that to some degree, mandates affect compliance levels. Here I think the data is less clear. One study (can't find link) showed that a mask mandate was something that just lagged a population increasing mask usage on their own. And it's imaginable that for some populations, a mandate might decrease compliance, when they might have otherwise masked up voluntarily. But for other populations, mandates increase compliance. But the point is separate from mandates: "mitigation" works. Meaning, social practices like mask use and distancing, whether mandated or not. Those practices drive down disease prevalence. So does vaccination. And people are Really bad at visualize exponential growth. Here's an example: Given the current understanding of mRNA effectiveness against Delta infection, you can even estimate counterfactual Rt. For instance, right now in Portland OR, regional Rt is around 0.91. So there's a halving rate of a few weeks. But given Portland's vaccination rate, if we had the exact same mitigation levels other than the vaccination rate, but if no one in this region were vaccinated, regional Rt would be around 2, meaning a doubling rate of 1-2 weeks. That is a huge difference in amount of suffering. And estimates of R0 for Delta (absent any mitigation) range from 5-9, so by that measure, current mitigation levels are saving a lot of suffering and a lot of lives.
    - spookthesunset 5y ago
      > current mitigation levels are saving a lot of suffering and a lot of lives. Explain Florida. Explain Sweden. When we jumped into this hot mess back in March of 2020 there was not a shred of evidence that any of these mitigations worked. To date, there still isn't--I wouldn't trust any research conducted in the heat of the moment. People don't have a level head right now. It will take decades to fully determine what worked and what didn't. I bothers me greatly that we are all unconsenting participants in an uncontrolled experiment. When you call all this it for what is, people gaslight you and bully you. All these "experts" are no better than witch doctors or rain dancers. They are making all these mandates with zero clue as to their efficiency. It's highly immoral and unethical.
  - mikestew 5y ago
    See for yourself: https://www.covidchartsquiz.com/ https://www.covidchartsquiz.com/ Did you mean to say "take a fucking quiz"? Because I was expecting to "see for <myself>" some useful information from that page.
    - spookthesunset 5y ago
      Did you actually take the quiz? All it is it charts pulled from public data sources. You know.... data.
  - tunesmith 5y ago
    That quiz is really bad. Sure, let's compare Iowa and Michigan (spoiler, those are the two states in the first question) when they have different demographics, different population densities, just completely different situations. You don't compare a death line from Iowa with a death line from Michigan, and conclude Iowa is "better" than Michigan just because it has a lower death rate at one point in time. You compare a single state to what it might have been had the restrictions been better or worse. You look at counterfactuals. And you can do that with science and data. So yes, you can take a region like, say, NYC, which had horrible lines in the beginning of the pandemic, and still conclude that it would have been far worse if not for the mitigation efforts it put in place. And you can look at other regions with lower population density, or populations that weren't well-tracked, regions with better death numbers than someplace like NY, and still conclude that they completely mismanaged the situation compared to what the numbers could have been. To just take two death lines from two different areas with completely different on-the-ground realities is just cherry-picking - at best motivated reasoning and at worst dishonest intent. Besides all that, even examining the numbers in the way the quiz wants to - but with current numbers, numbers that extend past the arbitrary cutoff point in those graphs - they show that Iowa currently has a worse Rt than Michigan, worse test positivity, disease prevalence that is almost twice as bad as Michigan, and checking today's data, Iowa's deaths per million are actually worse than Michigan's. (https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/public-health/us-coronavirus-deaths-by-state-july-1.html https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/public-health/us-coron...) In a state with less than 1/3 the population density. Throughout this thread you're also using absolutist language and exaggeration in ways that are literally untrue. You're demanding proof and then rejecting proof when it's presented. Really straining the boundaries of the "assume good faith" rule we follow on this site.
- ransom1538 5y ago
  Yes. You can get COVID now or you can get it later. You can delay the population catching COVID with masks, etc, but either way - everyone is going to get it. Might as well drop mask requirements at this point and get people vaccinated.
  - rubicon33 5y ago
    No thanks. Even pre-covid people were terrible about being sick in public, coughing on planes, etc. I hope the mask mandates stay, especially for places where distancing is hard. Everyone who knowingly exposes others to illness is at least forced to reduce the trajectory of their droplet spread somewhat now.
    - spookthesunset 5y ago
      > I hope the mask mandates stay, especially for places where distancing is hard. Somehow up until now, society has managed to function just fine without everybody wearing masks all the time. How do you even know masks work? Trusting some rushed research done in the middle of all this with tons of outside pressure to get the "correct" result? Even if masks do work, to what extent? And seriously, society has done fine without them. Plus, I dunno about anybody else but masks are a pain in the ass and I like seeing faces... if I had to wear a mask all the time that would have a substantial impact on my mental health (not to say it already has had impact on my mental health)
      - tunesmith 5y ago
        Are you unaware of the large mask use studies? Like here's one that made the national news fairly recently: https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2021/09/surgical-masks-covid-19.html https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2021/09/surgical-mask...
        spookthesunset 5y ago
        I've seen that study but masks are so grounded in people's political identity at this point I have a hard time trusting any research conducted. Any scientist publishing a paper saying there is no evidence masks work is gonna commit career suicide. Even if it did get published I bet a ton of money Twitter, FB and friends would all label it misinformation and all the "experts" would find ways to rip it to shreds. One cannot question Covid orthodoxy without getting burned.
mint2 5y ago
Why make “wild guesses” about things that can be verified easily? “Thanks to millions of vaccinations, California’s economy is open. There are no county tiers, capacity limits, or physical distancing requirements” - https://covid19.ca.gov/safely-reopening/ https://covid19.ca.gov/safely-reopening/ The only new restrictions I’m aware of is verifying people are vaccinated. Given ca’s vacs rate that shouldn’t be a huge issue. My guess would be this was caused by the delta variant concerns by companies and individuals, not any restrictions. Companies pushed back their back to office and we didn’t see a delta surge like elsewhere and that could be due to personal choices which prevented the surge being as significant but also cut commerce back a bit. Edit: Jeeze downvotes for pointing out its not state restrictions. Everyone really wants to bag on CA govt regardless of what’s actually happening.
- gamblor956 5y ago
  It's bizarre you're getting downvoted, since last week CA reported having record job recovery compared to the rest of the nation (https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2021-09-17/california-jobs-august-2021-unemployment https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2021-09-17/california...). Notably, on a county-breakdown, unemployment rates are highest in rural counties where anti-vax settlements are pervasive. (https://edd.ca.gov/newsroom/unemployment-august-2021.htm https://edd.ca.gov/newsroom/unemployment-august-2021.htm) Also notable: the CA labor department hasn't actually released an update for September, or a PR release about jobless claims through Sep 18, so I'm curious as to where the Mercury News got its information.
  - mint2 5y ago
    I think there was National job data released by the feds that maybe they could breakdown. But yeah, blaming restrictions on any dip in jobs is not justified based on data, at least none mentioned in this thread or that I’m aware of at the moment. As the OP phrased it with the sarcastic use of “wild guess” it seems that in their opinion since it’s CA it was by definition regulations and actual evidence is not needed. It seems some are searching for any way they can gripe about CA policies. As I’d said, if it’s Covid related then my guess is the public seeing headlines about the fiascos in other states for the past several months led to pull backs.

tunesmith 5y ago

And if they didn't have their level of COVID restrictions, COVID would be more prevalent, which would also impact the job market.

spookthesunset 5y ago
You assume those restrictions work. This has not been proven at all. The reality is all these restrictions could very well be taking a bad situation and making it 100x worse. I highly encourage comparing public data between regions and across policy changes. There is very little correlation between restrictions and impact to key metrics. See for yourself: https://www.covidchartsquiz.com/ https://www.covidchartsquiz.com/
- mywittyname 5y ago
  I aced that test by reading only the last sentence in the question and answering using this simple rule: If the question asking which state was most restrictive, select the worst looking charge, otherwise select the best looking one. Kind of indicates that the graphs are cherry-picked.
  - spookthesunset 5y ago
    Okay, do this with other charts. They all look the same. Nobody's ever done this before. Nobody knows if it works. And it really isn't the critics job to prove that restrictions don't work. It's upon all these people enacting to them to prove they actually work, and do so in a level that justifies their immense social cost. To date, people who point this out are harassed, bullied, mocked and gaslit. Society is participating in a huge uncontrolled experiment... and nobody even consented to it. Neat, ain't it?
- specialist 5y ago
  What measure of proof do you require? Infections? Mortality? Hospitalizations? Economic? To save others the bother, the quiz is OC from someone named Tom Wood, an apparent liberatarian, contrarian, freq guest on Fox News, and COVID concern troll of some sort.
  - spookthesunset 5y ago
    > To save others the bother, the quiz is OC from someone named Tom Wood, an apparent liberatarian, contrarian, freq guest on Fox News, and COVID concern troll of some sort. That is pretty weak sauce. Does it really matter who published it? It's freaking charts based on public data! It's not like they made any of it up! You can go right to the state websites and the CDC and create the same set of charts on your own!! Why do so many people get so upset when people present publicly available data that goes against the narrative? Seriously. Do you have any idea how many times I've been called "dangerous" just for simply posting a screenshot of a state covid dashboard? Seriously, what gives?
    - specialist 5y ago
      Ok, fine, I looked at Wood's charts. Current thru 2021/04. Before delta variant. Per the principle of charity, I'll say this rhetoric contains errors of omission. Please update this thesis with current data, inclusive of all jurisdictions. Then update again once positivity dips below 1%, which is hopefully sooner than later. If that doesn't demonstrate to you the benefit of masks, vax, mandates, testing, and whatever else you object to, I ask again: What measure of proof do you require?
      - spookthesunset 5y ago
        It's not my job to prove anything. I am not the one making the claim masks work or lockdowns work. People who want to force society to comply with all this are the ones who need to offer substantial and overwhelming evidence that any of this works to a degree that justifies the immense social costs. That means way more than a few of cherry picked papers that say "masks work" (while ignoring ones that don't like the danish mask study). I don't have to prove anything. It bothers me immensely that people think its the skeptics job to somehow prove that what we are doing doesn't work. That isn't how science works. Extraordinary claims (eg: lockdowns work to a degree that justifies their costs) require extraordinary evidence.
- tunesmith 5y ago
  As for restrictions, I can point out two things we know. Let's start with masks. First, we know that masks help to reduce spread. There have been large-scale studies that show conclusive results along these lines. Like https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2021/09/surgical-masks-covid-19.html https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2021/09/surgical-mask... . Second, we know that to some degree, mandates affect compliance levels. Here I think the data is less clear. One study (can't find link) showed that a mask mandate was something that just lagged a population increasing mask usage on their own. And it's imaginable that for some populations, a mandate might decrease compliance, when they might have otherwise masked up voluntarily. But for other populations, mandates increase compliance. But the point is separate from mandates: "mitigation" works. Meaning, social practices like mask use and distancing, whether mandated or not. Those practices drive down disease prevalence. So does vaccination. And people are Really bad at visualize exponential growth. Here's an example: Given the current understanding of mRNA effectiveness against Delta infection, you can even estimate counterfactual Rt. For instance, right now in Portland OR, regional Rt is around 0.91. So there's a halving rate of a few weeks. But given Portland's vaccination rate, if we had the exact same mitigation levels other than the vaccination rate, but if no one in this region were vaccinated, regional Rt would be around 2, meaning a doubling rate of 1-2 weeks. That is a huge difference in amount of suffering. And estimates of R0 for Delta (absent any mitigation) range from 5-9, so by that measure, current mitigation levels are saving a lot of suffering and a lot of lives.
  - spookthesunset 5y ago
    > current mitigation levels are saving a lot of suffering and a lot of lives. Explain Florida. Explain Sweden. When we jumped into this hot mess back in March of 2020 there was not a shred of evidence that any of these mitigations worked. To date, there still isn't--I wouldn't trust any research conducted in the heat of the moment. People don't have a level head right now. It will take decades to fully determine what worked and what didn't. I bothers me greatly that we are all unconsenting participants in an uncontrolled experiment. When you call all this it for what is, people gaslight you and bully you. All these "experts" are no better than witch doctors or rain dancers. They are making all these mandates with zero clue as to their efficiency. It's highly immoral and unethical.
- mikestew 5y ago
  See for yourself: https://www.covidchartsquiz.com/ https://www.covidchartsquiz.com/ Did you mean to say "take a fucking quiz"? Because I was expecting to "see for <myself>" some useful information from that page.
  - spookthesunset 5y ago
    Did you actually take the quiz? All it is it charts pulled from public data sources. You know.... data.
- tunesmith 5y ago
  That quiz is really bad. Sure, let's compare Iowa and Michigan (spoiler, those are the two states in the first question) when they have different demographics, different population densities, just completely different situations. You don't compare a death line from Iowa with a death line from Michigan, and conclude Iowa is "better" than Michigan just because it has a lower death rate at one point in time. You compare a single state to what it might have been had the restrictions been better or worse. You look at counterfactuals. And you can do that with science and data. So yes, you can take a region like, say, NYC, which had horrible lines in the beginning of the pandemic, and still conclude that it would have been far worse if not for the mitigation efforts it put in place. And you can look at other regions with lower population density, or populations that weren't well-tracked, regions with better death numbers than someplace like NY, and still conclude that they completely mismanaged the situation compared to what the numbers could have been. To just take two death lines from two different areas with completely different on-the-ground realities is just cherry-picking - at best motivated reasoning and at worst dishonest intent. Besides all that, even examining the numbers in the way the quiz wants to - but with current numbers, numbers that extend past the arbitrary cutoff point in those graphs - they show that Iowa currently has a worse Rt than Michigan, worse test positivity, disease prevalence that is almost twice as bad as Michigan, and checking today's data, Iowa's deaths per million are actually worse than Michigan's. (https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/public-health/us-coronavirus-deaths-by-state-july-1.html https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/public-health/us-coron...) In a state with less than 1/3 the population density. Throughout this thread you're also using absolutist language and exaggeration in ways that are literally untrue. You're demanding proof and then rejecting proof when it's presented. Really straining the boundaries of the "assume good faith" rule we follow on this site.
ransom1538 5y ago
Yes. You can get COVID now or you can get it later. You can delay the population catching COVID with masks, etc, but either way - everyone is going to get it. Might as well drop mask requirements at this point and get people vaccinated.
- rubicon33 5y ago
  No thanks. Even pre-covid people were terrible about being sick in public, coughing on planes, etc. I hope the mask mandates stay, especially for places where distancing is hard. Everyone who knowingly exposes others to illness is at least forced to reduce the trajectory of their droplet spread somewhat now.
  - spookthesunset 5y ago
    > I hope the mask mandates stay, especially for places where distancing is hard. Somehow up until now, society has managed to function just fine without everybody wearing masks all the time. How do you even know masks work? Trusting some rushed research done in the middle of all this with tons of outside pressure to get the "correct" result? Even if masks do work, to what extent? And seriously, society has done fine without them. Plus, I dunno about anybody else but masks are a pain in the ass and I like seeing faces... if I had to wear a mask all the time that would have a substantial impact on my mental health (not to say it already has had impact on my mental health)
    - tunesmith 5y ago
      Are you unaware of the large mask use studies? Like here's one that made the national news fairly recently: https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2021/09/surgical-masks-covid-19.html https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2021/09/surgical-mask...
      - spookthesunset 5y ago
        I've seen that study but masks are so grounded in people's political identity at this point I have a hard time trusting any research conducted. Any scientist publishing a paper saying there is no evidence masks work is gonna commit career suicide. Even if it did get published I bet a ton of money Twitter, FB and friends would all label it misinformation and all the "experts" would find ways to rip it to shreds. One cannot question Covid orthodoxy without getting burned.

mint2 5y ago

Why make “wild guesses” about things that can be verified easily? “Thanks to millions of vaccinations, California’s economy is open. There are no county tiers, capacity limits, or physical distancing requirements” - https://covid19.ca.gov/safely-reopening/ https://covid19.ca.gov/safely-reopening/ The only new restrictions I’m aware of is verifying people are vaccinated. Given ca’s vacs rate that shouldn’t be a huge issue. My guess would be this was caused by the delta variant concerns by companies and individuals, not any restrictions. Companies pushed back their back to office and we didn’t see a delta surge like elsewhere and that could be due to personal choices which prevented the surge being as significant but also cut commerce back a bit. Edit: Jeeze downvotes for pointing out its not state restrictions. Everyone really wants to bag on CA govt regardless of what’s actually happening.

gamblor956 5y ago
It's bizarre you're getting downvoted, since last week CA reported having record job recovery compared to the rest of the nation (https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2021-09-17/california-jobs-august-2021-unemployment https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2021-09-17/california...). Notably, on a county-breakdown, unemployment rates are highest in rural counties where anti-vax settlements are pervasive. (https://edd.ca.gov/newsroom/unemployment-august-2021.htm https://edd.ca.gov/newsroom/unemployment-august-2021.htm) Also notable: the CA labor department hasn't actually released an update for September, or a PR release about jobless claims through Sep 18, so I'm curious as to where the Mercury News got its information.
- mint2 5y ago
  I think there was National job data released by the feds that maybe they could breakdown. But yeah, blaming restrictions on any dip in jobs is not justified based on data, at least none mentioned in this thread or that I’m aware of at the moment. As the OP phrased it with the sarcastic use of “wild guess” it seems that in their opinion since it’s CA it was by definition regulations and actual evidence is not needed. It seems some are searching for any way they can gripe about CA policies. As I’d said, if it’s Covid related then my guess is the public seeing headlines about the fiascos in other states for the past several months led to pull backs.